Politics, Music, Sounds, and Sanity: Proud Member of the Reality-Based Community

Saturday, June 14, 2008

The rich get rich and the poor get children, Ain't we got fun

Tim Russert was a decent family man, and a frustrating journalist. He epitomized "gotcha" tactics (see Obama/Rev. Wright) while often failing to go after real issues, like why we were about to invade Iraq. His passing is sad.

But cynic that I am, my 2nd thought after hearing of his death was that someone, likely on the right, would use the twofer of Russert's passing and Friday to do some kind of document dump, in hopes the media would ignore an real news.

I'm still not sure if that happened, but my blog buddy Blue Girl has found some real news, and it ain't pretty:

A federal judge has ruled in favor of the American Small Business League (ASBL), and ordered the Small Business Administration (SBA) to provide the ASBL with more than 10,000 pages of data that listed the names of all firms that received federal small business contracts for fiscal years 2005 and 2006.

The ASBL filed suit to obtain the data, alleging that the SBA had covered up the fact that small business contracts were going to large companies. Now the ASBL is charging that the SBA manipulated the data that was turned over after a court order ruled the ASLB was entitled to see it.

- In May of 2007, the SBA went so far as to issue a press release titled, "Myth vs. Fact: SBA and Government Contracting," which stated that it is a myth that large companies, including large, multinational corporations are taking away federal contracts specifically intended for small businesses. After reviewing the data, the ASBL and both third party experts all found that the Bush Administration had in fact included billions of dollars in awards to Fortune 500 corporations and other large businesses in the United States and Europe in its small business contracting statistics. The Bush Administration falsified their compliance with the congressionally mandated 23 percent small business contracting goal by including such corporate giants as Dyncorp, Battelle Memorial Institute, Hewlett Packard, Government Technology Services Inc (GTSI), Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, General Electric, Northstar Aerospace, Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. and Raytheon. (http://www.sba.gov/idc/groups/public/documents/sba_homepage/news_07-30.pdf)

. . . Up to $800 billion, diverted from small businesses and the middle class American economy. We're perilously close to talking about real money here.

The ASBL is continuing to audit the data and a more detailed report on their findings will be released within 30 days. The information is now available on the ASBL's website.

Nice. The rich get rich and the rest of us can go suck eggs. Just another Right-wing affirmative action program in full bloom.

Bastards.

For an extra little treat,click on the image below for a 1921 recording of the song. Still very applicable today.